Ramp Up crews help folks stay in their homes

Volunteers install low-rise steps to make it easier for a resident with a walker to get in and out of his home
Bob Dohr/Daily Herald Media

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Jim Langkamp, left, Schofield and John Ohnstad, right, Wausau drill screws as they install a ramp in the home of Milton Laffin of Wausau, Tuesday, February 10, 2015. In the background Stan Schacht, left, and Ray Nowaczyk, both of Wausau, discuss the plans for the rest of the ramp.(Photo: Dan Young/Daily Herald Media)Buy Photo

WAUSAU — Getting in and out of their house is a whole lot easier for a couple on Wausau's northeast side after volunteers spent a good part of Tuesday installing a series of low-rise steps at the home's entrance.

The volunteers are part of Ramp Up Marathon County, an arm of the nonprofit Community Foundation of North Central Wisconsin, which helps lower-income Marathon County residents who are older or have disabilities to stay in their own homes by designing and building wheelchair ramps or, in this case, low-rise/deep-tread steps that can be used by someone with a walker.

Ramp Up co-chairman Bill Pogge, 67, of Wausau and four other volunteers worked to install the three steps — each about 31/2 inches high — in the breezeway of the home on North 18th Street to make it easier and safer for 90-year-old Milton Laffin to use his walker to get in and out of the house.

Rosemarie Laffin, 89, said her husband has neuropathy and is prone to falling, and the low-rise steps will be a huge improvement over the aluminum ramp they had been using to get from the house to ground level, which she called a "little dangerous."

"So this is why we went to this, where we can hold on to the sides," she said. "With this other one, there was nothing to hold on to, you just walked down."

Milton Laffin said he can't say enough about the work the volunteers did.

This was the second project by the group; the first was a ramp installation in October on Wausau's west side. Pogge said another ramp is set to be installed next month and two others are in the design phase.

Referrals for Ramp Up projects come from the Aging and Disability Resource Center of Central Wisconsin. Volunteers take care of the design, construction and installation. Funding for materials is provided through grants.

"Our first grant was from Aspirus. That helped us build the first ramp and these stairs," Pogge said. "Then we also got a significant grant from the (B.A. & Esther) Greenheck Foundation, which will really allow us to build many."

Although the steps installed at the Laffin house were out of the weather, Ramp Up volunteer coordinator Ray Nowaczyk said crews used treated wood so the lumber could be reused in the future.

"We reclaim whatever we can when the person's through using it and use it in other situations," Nowaczyk said. "So we use treated (wood). That way we can use it outside if we need to use it outside."

Pogge said the community coming together to help people stay in their homes is a positive thing, but there's a financial component to it, too.

"We can put in a ramp for maybe two to three thousand dollars, one-time expense, and that's all materials," Pogge said. "If you have to leave home because you can't have access and have to go to a nursing home, that's $7,000 a month. It's a no-brainer when you look at it that way."

Pogge said the original idea was to have Ramp Up install only ramps, but he hit on the idea of also building the low-rise steps so they could service walkers as well as wheelchairs.

"I built something like this on my own for somebody, and I just went, 'This is a great deal, for the amount of money and the amount of time invested, this really makes sense, and there's nobody else doing it,'" Pogge said.

Pogge said Ramp Up is looking for volunteers to help with construction, but the group also could use someone to help with the design process and someone to be a lead builder.

Pogge said the mood on the builds is lighthearted but it doesn't come at the expense of quality.

"It's pretty casual in the sense that nobody gets too excited about anything," Pogge said. "But we do do top-grade work. We work really hard to build to code and beyond."

Bob Dohr can be reached at 715-845-0660. Find him on Twitter as @BobDohr1.

Ramp Up Marathon County

To volunteer or get more information about Ramp Up Marathon County, call Bill Pogge at 715-675-5470